Fifa boss threatens to ban stars if they join private league
Super League membership for 20 years, with five more clubs from those countries invited to play.
The breakaway from football’s historic hierarchy — Fifa, the six continental bodies and 211 national federations — would allow officials to ban players from major competitions, including the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
‘‘The idea is if you break away, you break away. You don’t keep one foot in and one foot out,’’ Fifa legal director Alasdair Bell said.
‘‘That would be the general approach we would follow, but of course lawyers can debate this for a long time.’’
Both Infantino and Bell were longtime staff members at Uefa, which has steadily changed Champions League prize money and entry rules to favour elite clubs and stall breakaway threats.
‘‘This is the history of the last 20 years,’’ said Infantino, who has clashed this year with European football officials and club leaders over Fifa’s pro posed Club World Cup project, which is funded by Japanese investor SoftBank.
Infantino said his plan — potentially featuring at least 12 European clubs in a 24team lineup, and worth a promised $US3 billion ($NZ4.4 billion) every four years — was a good alternative to a private, closed league.
A Fifa task force will assess a revamp of competitions, including a new event for all national teams played every two years.
Infantino said he expects a decision in March when he chairs a Fifa Council meeting in Miami. —
ZURICH: Football’s biggest names will be banned from the World Cup if they play in any breakaway European Super League, Fifa president Gianni Infantino warned yesterday.
Infantino, speaking to a small group of reporters at Fifa headquarters, said the governing body will punish players at clubs like Barcelona, Manchester City and Bayern Munich if they leave football’s organised structure to form a privatelyowned league.
‘‘Either you are in or you are out,’’ Infantino said, listing the World Cup, European Championship and national leagues as competitions that players from breakaway teams could be excluded from.
‘‘This includes everything.’’ Talk of a longthreatened super league was revived on Saturday when German magazine Der Spiegel published confidential documents and emails from clubs and football bodies in its ‘‘Football Leaks’’ series.
Real Madrid was revealed to be working with consultants on a 16team Super League to kick off in 2021 — effectively replacing the Champions League and outside the control of Uefa.
The plan called for 11 storied clubs from Spain, England, Germany, Italy and France to get ownership stakes and riskfree